Even during his speeches on jobs, health care and the economy, the Republican congressman said he has started fielding a few questions about privacy, spying and surveillance, a sign that fears about the ultra-secret National Security Agency have spread beyond the Beltway as lawmakers embark on their annual town-hall tours.

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The NSA’s powers to obtain phone call logs and Internet chats haven’t spawned the fury some lawmakers recall all too well from the fiery battle over health care reform. Nor has government surveillance supplanted the economy as the leading issue on the nation’s conscience. New Al Qaeda threats against U.S. embassies, meanwhile, have reinforced for some on Capitol Hill the importance of strong counter-terrorism programs.

Still, doubts and criticisms about government snooping have started to surface in numerous districts and states, a reflection that Edward Snowden’s leaks are kindling public suspicions. Amid the mounting revelations, some voters seem eager to have a debate that President Barack Obama and most of Washington never wanted in the first place. A Washington Post report Thursday that the NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times a year may only add to the questions lawmakers face.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), for example, already has tangled with protestors who are seething over the pol’s position on surveillance, and activists have rallied against House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has addressed her constituents’ deep-seated distrust of government directly. And perhaps looking to capitalize on the news, Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) had invited the reporter who first unveiled the scope of the NSA’s surveillance programs — Glenn Greenwald — to speak at one of his campaign events.

“There’s a very real interest and concern expressed more frequently than ever before,” said Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who’s in his home state of Connecticut. “I think Americans have become strongly questioning about big institutions in their lives — not just big government, but big banks, big corporations.”

The national conversation about government surveillance originates with Snowden, whose revelations have illuminated a U.S. intelligence apparatus that’s able to obtain a foreign suspect’s phone call logs, Internet chats and more. It’s also raised new questions as to what extent U.S. citizens’ data could be caught in the fray.

The White House has insisted it’s followed the law, emphasizing it has the appropriate checks in place. And Obama, after weeks of criticism, addressed the matter at the top of a news conference last Friday, promising reforms to a system that many privacy hawks believe has become a rubber stamp for government snooping.

Frustration reached a boiling point on Capitol Hill last month after Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) launched an effort to defund the NSA’s phone-records program — an amendment, almost entirely symbolic in nature, that attracted broad bipartisan support. It ultimately failed, but the congressman’s move set the stage for a fierce fight that’s now evolved beyond the confines of Washington.

It’s even touched Fitzpatrick’s home base, the economically stratified 8th District of Pennsylvania. Unemployment reached about 7 percent in Bucks County this summer, and jobs and health care still trump all else. But at a town hall in Lower Salford last weekend and a telephone town hall this summer, Fitzpatrick said he found himself diverting from those key issues briefly to answer at least a few NSA questions.

“There are many issues the American people are concerned about, privacy chief among them. And while it may not come up at every town hall, it is, I believe, based on conversations with my constituents, always on their minds,” Fitzpatrick told POLITICO last week, just after speaking at a local Lower Bucks County Chamber of Commerce event dominated not by surveillance but by spending, transportation and health care.

In San Jose, Calif., meanwhile, Lofgren fielded a question during a telephone town hall this month from a local voter who wanted to know why, exactly, Amash’s amendment had failed — because it had been “an incomplete idea or … because by and large your colleagues think it’s OK to spy on us?”

Lofgren responded that Amash’s effort “wasn’t as well-written as it might have been,” though she stressed the importance of transparency and oversight even as the government scours the globe for terrorists. Lofgren voted for the amendment.

Activists with Demand Progress and similar groups raised their surveillance qualms at a town hall held Tuesday by Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee. And a small group of protestors appeared to disrupt Van Hollen’s recent August gathering, an event focused on climate change in Silver Spring, Md. The tiny activist cohort carried signs emblazoned, “VAN HOLLEN WRONG ON NSA: Restore the 4th!” The Democratic congressman voted against the so-called Amash amendment because it wasn’t “the most comprehensive and effective” approach, according to a spokeswoman, who added Van Hollen does support “rewriting these laws.”